Mozilla successfuly released yesterday the latest major edition of Firefox, though faced by an animation major blooper in its attempt to make a Guinness record for biggest number of downloads on the first day as its entire went down as a result of the massive number of people attempting to download the new version. Mozilla has recovered now and you can download the shiny new Firefox 3.0 with enhanced support of DOM, CSS, SVG and the newly added the capability to display animated PNGs (if you know how to make them!).

Serious web developers should also check out Firefox add-on Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar to help them debug and test their websites in Firefox.

Download the new Firefox 3.0 via this link.

Mozilla released yesterday the RC1 of the next major edition of Firefox. The 3.0 version of Firefox improves on its support for CSS, SVG, and adds support for animated PNGs among many other enhancements. Web developers and those in the business of making websites should check it out to make sure that their websites do not break in the new Firefox. View the Firefox 3 Developer Center here, or alternatively go straight for downloads via this link.

Some dude with loads of free time on his hands has decided to create a mobile application for modeling 3D objects by plotting NURBS curves on tiny mobile screens. Objects modeled using the Maya On-The-Go Java application can then be saved and imported onto Maya and Softimage | XSI to be used in *bigger* projects. I cannot think of a reason why anybody would want to spend time away from a computer modeling little 3D boxes, but you can try it out if you have the time just for the novelty of this free mobile application. Check out Maya On-The-Go to learn more about it and download the mobile application for free (Compatible only with Nokia phones).

[via CGIndia]

Adobe released yesterday the public beta version of its web based Photoshop Express - a free simple image tuning Flash application that lets users edit and store their images on the web. This program does not provide much functionality in comparison to the desktop based Photoshop or even in comparison to other free web based image editors such as Aviary’s Phoenix or Picnik, although it must be admitted that Photoshop Express is directed at mainstream consumers looking for a simple method to tune their photographs and not professionals looking for a serious image editor.

Photoshop Express offers free 2GB of web space for users to host their images and share them with others. You can join the public beta to try the application yourself here.

Aviary is a set of web based applications for creating all sorts of media. The concept of this suite of creative content creation tools is similar to Picnik, Google Docs, and Adobe Kuler, all of which are rich internet applications (RIAs) to be used within your browser. RIAs provide the possibility to run the application on any machine that has a proper browser and an internet connection without the need to carry your data along with you or even install the applications on the computer you work on. The nature of web applications creates unlimited opportunities for collaboration at real time as featured in Google Docs.

Aviary takes RIAs one step further by providing relatively more powerful applications than what we have seen before, these applications include an image editor, a vector editor, a 3D modeling tool, a video editor, a music generator and other creative tools that make up its 14 application-suite. The video below illustrates the capability of Phoenix, Aviary’s image editor:

I personally use many web applications and Google Docs and Picnik are some of my favourites. I find Aviary’s project very interesting and think that it shows us a glimpse of how the future should be.Aviary is currently in private beta and invitations are floating around the internet. You can submit your email to the invitation queue and learn more about Aviary from their official website.

InstantStorm is a Windows freeware tool for creating Flash based screensavers with many advanced features. Unlike many other flash screensavers conversion tools, InstantStorm allows you to fully customize your screensaver’s about box, installer and uninstaller including all texts. InstantStorm is really easy to use. If you’re a beginner, the New Project Wizard will help you make a professional screensaver in simple steps. Learn more about InstantStrom’s features here. You can also get your hands on a free copy of this application from its offcial site’s download section here.

[Via Downloadsquad]

Just in time for the holidays, Adobe released new updates to AIR and Flex along with a first time release of a new technology called BlazeDS. Adobe AIR Beta 3 is the latest update to Adobe’s cross-platform runtime for deploying web-enabled desktop applications created using Flash, HTML, and Ajax. The latest update includes various features such as the functionality to run applications at start-up and the detection and launch of installed AIR applications from a web browser. The first application made by AIR Beta 3 is Adobe’s new desktop version of Kuler, Adobe’s color theme creation tool.

Adobe also released the new update to its open-source framework for creating rich internet applications, the new Beta 3 of Flex includes updates to the Flex SDK and the Flex Builder.

The last major release by Adobe this week is BlazeDS, a new technology for pushing information live from a server to Flex and AIR applications without the need for the client-side application to request a data update. This new technology is distributed under the LGPL vs3 making it available to developers free of charge. The source code of BlazeDS will be available for download early in 2008.

Adobe announced last week its intentions to make Flex Blender, the tool for creating rich internet applications using ActionScript 3.0, free to students and faculty staff of qualifying educational institutes. The open source version of Flex has been available for a while, and now the full fledged version will also be available for free to many. It is clear that Adobe is experimenting with different strategies to expand the usage of Flex and its AIR platform in order to compete with the several new technologies such as AJAX, Google Gears, and Silverlight for bridging the gap between desktop and web based applications.

This free version of Flex to be released next month will probably be available only for students in North America and Europe.

Three years has passed since the last update of GIMP, the open source image editing and image authoring program for the Linux, Windows, and Mac OSes. Highlights of the new update include scalable filters, redesigned selection tools, new align tool, newly organised menus, and additional supported format.

GIMP is totally free, so there is no excuse not to give it a try. The UI is different from that of Adobe’s Photoshop, so it might take you a while to get used to it.

Please be aware that running GIMP requires the GTK + 2 Runtime which you can download from here.

You can learn more about GIMP and download it for free from the GIMP homepage.

[via Download Squad]

Adobe showed a sneak preview at the Photoshop World conference of the upcoming Photoshop Express, it’s free web-base image editing tool. Photoshop Express is not expected to replace any of the existing Photoshop products, but is directed at Internet users wishing to edit images on the fly from within their browsers. There are many existing products that do this already such as Picnik (my personal favourite) which could be seriously threatened by Adobe’s upcoming product.

Check out the screenshot and learn more about this on John Nack’s blog.

[via TechCrunch]